Recommit

Welcome back.  It has been awhile since I last posted here.  But I'm writing now.

Since I completed my 360 (+5) days of Adho Mukha Svanasana last January, my yoga path, my practice, and my relationship with my body have changed.  I'd like to say for the better, but that isn't true. I've been following my yoga path halfheartedly. Like a 10-year-old child who must go on a 3-mile day hike with her parents, my practice has been prone to a lot of stops and starts, grumbling and complaining at times, and then, in the next moment, enthusiastically racing ahead, eager to see what lies ahead. I've lacked direction and focus, and other things have often preoccupied my mind. My inconsistent practice has resulted in diminished attention to and appreciation of my body: its needs and wants, its strengths and weaknesses, its beauty and impermanence. 

Everyday offers us an opportunity to start new, to recommit to paths and relationships from which we've wandered and strayed. This January, I am recommitting to my yoga path, my practice, and my body.  I recommit so that I may regain direction and focus in line with my highest intentions and aspirations, calmness and clarity in my mind, and awe and respect for my body.

"It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life for me...and I'm feeling good."*

AND we’re under the 30-day mark…

Actually, we're under the 24-day mark.  Or I am.  My 360 days of Adho Mukha Svanasana is officially winding down.  Today marks my 336 straight day of yoga practice.  The end of the tunnel is in sight, though honestly, this journey has never felt anything like an endless tunnel.  Predictably, the first month was the hardest, because it takes time to adjust to a new daily time commitment.  Now, it is so automatic and normal, that I’m almost scared to go that minimum 30 minutes of yoga a day.

When I took on this challenge in January, I had a big list of questions about what I might experience by doing yoga every day.  Over the next three+ weeks, I want to revisit some of those questions here in the bloggity-blog.  You can read my initial two blog posts with ALL of those questions here and here.  One caveat: it is impossible to know how much of any change I’ve undergone in the last 336 days has been a result specifically of doing yoga—in many cases, yoga is one of many things that may have facilitated a change. The best way to test daily yoga’s effect on me would be to stop doing yoga every day, and even then, NOT doing yoga would likely be one of many things that might facilitate a change.  Still, I want to try to answer my questions to gauge the impact of this year-long experience!  So let’s get started with the mother of all questions:

• After a year of daily yoga practice, will I feel happier? More balanced and patient? Calmer? Less anxious?

Wow.  This is really hard to answer.  See, when I began this process, I had already begun a kind of remarkable transformation in terms of my mental health.  Seriously, if you were to turn back the clock and look at me not 360 days, but 720 days ago, you would think you were looking at my twin sister: my totally depressed, anxious, high-strung, impatient twin sister.  My Debbie Downer twin could not have committed to practicing yoga every single day, no matter how much she already loved yoga and how often she did yoga.   

So, in the year leading up to beginning my yoga 360, I made a lot of tough, painful decisions, took some big risks, and began to change my life on many, many fronts.  It was a really hard year, but I got through it and came out a much stronger, smarter, healthier person.

When 2010 began, I had only recently begun to feel like I was standing on solid ground, or rather like I could keep my footing on the ever-shifting ground below me.  I was feeling happier than I had in a really long time.  I felt only a shadow of the perpetual anxiety that had been clouding my thoughts and actions for the majority of my adult life.  I was just getting the idea of what a balanced life might feel like, that it was something I could actually have, that it was something I wanted.  Basically, I was finally in a place where I felt capable of truly committing to something long term; thus began my year of yoga.

I don’t know if doing yoga every day has made me any happier than I was last December.  But it definitely has not made me LESS happy.  Yes, I’ve had days this year when I’ve felt like nothing good would ever happen to me again, days when I’ve felt like anxiety was ripping me up inside.  But I’ve also had days this year when I’ve felt unadulterated joy and satisfaction that I’m alive, days when my mind can’t recall what it is to worry about something.  On most days of this past year, though, I haven’t been extremely sad or happy, but fine, okay-to-good, more or less satisfied.  I think this is what it looks like to have a balanced life. 

I absolutely believe that my yoga has helped me sustain this balance in my life.  If I come to my mat in a ridiculously giddy mood, I generally find myself settling down over the course of my practice, reigning in my happiness a bit so that I may maintain it longer, and so that it isn’t such a shock to my system when something undesirable happens.  Likewise, if I come to my mat in a real foul mood, my practice helps redirect my focus: things might suck, but at that moment, I’m paying attention to my balance.  The brief reprieve from my troubles that yoga’s temporary shift in focus provides always leaves me calmer and better prepared to face what ever has my panties in a bunch.  Yoga evens my keel when I’m tipping too much to one side of the other.  Most days, my practice mirrors and affirms my fine, more-or-less satisfied mental space, like breathing or blinking.  It is a part of what keeps me regular.

So whether or not daily yoga this year has made me MORE anything, it definitely was involved in helping me STAY happy, calm, patient, and balanced.

*                      *                      *

Minutes for the accountability police.  Yes, practiced every day.  Here's the rough round up:

11/8-11/14: 305

11/15-11/21: 315

11/22-11/28: 235

11/29-12/7: 285

Namaste!

 

Being present

Blog? What blog?

Hmmm…  It seems to me that, while I’ve been AWESOME at doing yoga for 30 minutes every day for 306 straight days now, my parallel goal to blog regularly and track my yoga minutes ever 10-14 days has totally gone down the toilet.  Oops.  I think I psyche myself out a bit with the blog.  See, I have all sorts of blog ideas, but I want them to be so dang good.  Like, really spectacular investigative yoga blogging.  That kind of thoughtful and thought-provoking work, it takes more than 30 minutes to write.  And I’ve been rather busy writing some earth-shattering copy about memory foam and weather stations and sewing machines during the last month or two.  Ah, excuses, excuses!

Besides, since the wrist injury in August, I’ve gotten out of the habit of writing down exactly how many minutes I’ve spent doing yoga every day on my calendar.  Believe me; I’ve done it every darn day.  I’ve just been lazy about documentation.  But I’m going to try to do some weekly guesstimates below, in the interest of being able to roughly estimate the total amount of time I spent doing yoga this year come New Years Day.

9/5-11: 230 minutes                         10/10-16: 275 minutes

9/12-18: 310 minutes                       10/17-23: 345 minutes

9/19-25: 220 minutes                       10/24-31: 275 minutes       

9/26-10/2: 340 minutes                    11/1-7: 230 minutes           

10/3-9: 340 minutes

Notable practices in the last two months:

• My first class post wrist injury on 9/12, taught by my lovely friend Megan, and captured on video tape to complete her yoga teacher training program.  Yay, Megan!
•  Yoga on the road, part one, September 22-27.  I did yoga in my lovely childhood friend Jamie’s yard in the Astoria hood of Queens, NY for three days.  Then I practiced for three days in Chappaqua, NY, at the home of my brother and sister-in-law, in the room that has since then become 26-days-old niece and nephew! 
• My first handstand post wrist injury, on September 29.  I love them so. 
• Yoga on the road, part two, October 16-17.  I did yoga at my old college pal Liz’s apartment in Portland, which rivals mine in tiny-ness.  There’s nothing like practicing with a hangover…

Cat and Cow--yoga cures for over-imbibing...

             *                      *                       *                      *                

Then there was my practice yesterday morning, my Daylight Savings Time “Fall Back” practice. 

Now, over the past ten months, my home practice has become very comfortable, very routine, and sometimes very boring.  I admit, since my injury in August, my daily practices at home rarely exceed 31-35 minutes.  When I couldn’t do any weight-bearing on my wrist, it was hard to drum up more than 30 minutes of poses and I’d check the clock constantly to find out how much more yoga I had to do.  I didn’t feel like doing yoga daily was a burden, but I definitely had negative feelings about my limitations and the amount of time I’d committed to practicing daily.  I could have embraced the injury as a golden opportunity to meditate more or to cultivate my pranayama practice.  But I have a tendency to let my restless energy dictate.  I’m not going to condemn myself for that—I am what I am.

However, as I healed and my home practice started filling up with downward dog, plank, handstand, and headstand and all those other weight-bearing hand/arm poses again, my clock-watching habit didn’t abate.  I’ve become a pro of the 31-minute yoga practice, barely lying dormant in Savasana for 30 seconds before jumping up off the mat with a quick “Namaste,” eager to go about my day.  In some ways, I feel like my home yoga practice in the last several months has more in common with my showers than my experiences in yoga classes: not a burden, but a necessary part of my day; sometimes luxurious, but generally not; routine.

So yesterday, with the help DST and that extra hour in the day, my morning felt so much more spacious than usual.  And that spacious feeling carried over to my yoga practice.  I was doing yoga “earlier” than I usually do on a Sunday morning, because I woke up “earlier” than usual.  I felt the freedom to linger in forward bends longer, to hold stretches and poses longer, to play with different poses than usual, to practice pranayama even.  I was engaging with my yoga with more intention and intimacy than I have in my home practice since before Labor Day.  It was an incredibly refreshing home practice—sublime.

In the Anusara yoga classes I attend, after we chant Om three times and the Anusara invocation in Sanskrit, the teacher always asks us to bow our heads towards our hearts and to set an intention for our practice before we release our hands, open our eyes, and start moving.  The intentions that I set in this pause are always attuned to my current physical, emotional, and spiritual status and needs.  If my heart is feeling tender, I set an intention to be gentle and patient with myself and to approach poses from a place of openness, without self criticism, and with no expectations except that I attempt poses to the best of my ability in that moment of that day.  If my heart is feeling joyous, my intention may be to express that feeling in my practice, to see how far my limbs can expand, to push the edge just a little bit further.

I googled "Be Present" and got Ernest Hemingway kicking a can.

I would like to set an intention for my home practice in the next 54 days.  Each time I step onto my mat, I will take the time to tune into where my body, mind, and heart are, how they are doing and what they need from yoga that day—set a daily intention, just like in class.  Then I will actively focus in my practice on meeting that intention and filling those needs, abandoning distracting thoughts about my schedule, work, food, and relationships until I am off the mat.  Lastly, I will move the clock so it is out of my line of sight on the mat.

I also hereby set an intention to blog more as I head into the last stretch of this journey!

Namaste!

Yes, but can you do that with just one hand?

If only I were as tough as you, Jack Palance....

Over a month has passed since my last blog.  Not only that, but I haven’t been dutifully writing my minutes down on my calendar.  Now don’t panic, I haven’t fallen off my every-day yoga train.  The reason I haven’t been writing down my minutes is simple: for the last month or so, I have done yoga for ~30-35 minutes every single day.  Even stranger, I have done yoga around the same time in the morning on each of those days.

This degree of regularity in my yoga practice was unheard of in my yoga 360 until a month ago.  For the first seven months of this project, I've been consistent in practicing yoga every day, but I sure as hell haven’t been consistent in how much (other than meeting my imposed 30-minute daily minimum) or when I practice.  So what happened to make my yoga practice so dang routine? 

I got hurt.

Really, that’s the reason behind my incredible regular practice.  That’s what it took to turn my daily yoga practice into something as automatic and predictable in my day as getting out of bed.

Now, this isn’t the first time this year I’ve had to work with an injury. But this time I hurt my wrist.  My right wrist.  I hurt it after a long day of digging.  That night, I ached all over, but especially about 2 inches up from my wrist on my forearm.  When I did yoga as usual the next day, it wasn’t too uncomfortable.  But opening jars, washing dishes, using my car’s stick shift, washing my hair, writing, fastening and unfastening my bra and pants, and about a hundred other things...now those things were SERIOUSLY uncomfortable!

I would be holding the baby in this picture, if it didn't make my wrist cry...

“Well, it isn’t broken,” the doctor said when I went in to have my wrist checked out.  “It’s tendinitis of the wrist flexors.”  He strapped a big black Velcro brace on me, told me to take 4 ibuprofen 3 times a day, ice my wrist for 15 minutes three times a day, and to rest it. He told me it could take 2 to 4 weeks for my wrist to heal.  “But I do yoga every day,” I told him.  “Can I at least do downward-facing dog and plank on my forearms?”  To which he gave me a curt "No.”  

No swimming either?!!!  Bending the rules with a Cookie Monster water wing.

And thus came the end of my quest towards 360 days of Adho Mukha Svanasana (that’s Dog pose, yo).  But not my quest towards 360 days of yoga!  When I began this project, I anticipated that I might get hurt and I committed to adapting as necessary to continue my yoga practice.  So when I hurt my wrist, I started adapting.

Tendinitis can't keep me from climbing a mountain, with MY EYES CLOSED!

I couldn’t go to any classes as almost every single yoga class I’ve ever been to has heavily featured downward-facing dog.  Dog is like the complex carbohydrates of a yoga class—substantial and unavoidable in the yoga studio.  But it is possible to omit it from one’s home practice, and all other poses that require any sort of weight bearing on the wrists. So that’s what I did.  No dog, no plank, no cobra, no handstand, no wheel, no crow, no cat and no cow, no, no, and no. I also had be careful and make modifications in other poses like triangle or side-angle pose to make sure I didn’t put much weight on my right hand/arm.

After eliminating those poses from my asana practice, I was left with a lot of standing and balance poses, seated twists, and stretches on my back.  Honestly, during that first week, I found it a little difficult to fill up more than 30 minutes with this limited catalog of poses, which explains my string of 30-to-35-minute-long practices.  I also struggled with boredom; I really missed having all those other poses to toss into my daily mix.  My typical yoga practice does have a degree of order to it, poses I generally do before certain other poses, but there is still a lot of flexibility.  But with my wrist's limitations, I found I did the same poses in more or less the same order (vinyasa) every day.  (Please note that while this is unusual for ME, there are many types of yoga, like Ashtanga, in which one always does the same vinyasa sequence, no matter the class, the instructor, etc.) Maybe this order to my asanas is behind the development of a regular practice time of day in my yoga life; does one routine begets another routine?

I didn’t anticipate a painful wrist injury to bring such stability to my yoga life.  It has been interesting to observe how I’ve responded to a more structured, albeit limited, practice this month.  I’ve enjoyed the additional structure to my day for the most part.  But I really miss classes—sharing the time with other yogis and yoginis, holding poses longer, and being led through different poses I’m not so familiar or comfortable with, etc.

While my wrist is still weak, I’m virtually pain-free and only wearing the brace when I’m doing yoga.  I added dog and plank on my forearms back into my repertoire about ten days ago.  In the last few days, I’ve started pushing into full downward-facing dog.  I often wonder if I’m capable of doing more than I’m allowing myself in my practice. Could I be doing handstand without any issues right now?  But I think there is wisdom in showing restraint, recognizing that I may be more limited from the injury than I notice.  I’m trying to look beyond that 35 minutes on the mat and think about the rest of the month, next month, and beyond!

 Namaste!

The Six Month Post: Completionitis

"Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat."
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

On the 4th of July, I hit the 180-day mark of my 360 days of yoga. That’s six months. I’m over half way there.

I gave my father this little update on the phone the other day. He said to me, “My God, you’re really doing this, aren’t you?” Yes, Dad, I really am. I really am going to see this project through, from start to finish.

In the past few years, I’ve had some issues with completion. Lots of unfinished business.  Some people get hung up on starting things. Not me. I start things left and right. I love starting things! The big finish is where I get stuck. Thus, I am a person who habitually:

• Cooks an elaborate dinner, leaves dishes piled up in the sink until the next night, or next week. 
• Mixes up ingredients for homemade ice cream, and passes off the hand-crank ice cream maker to someone else. 
• Folds laundry and leaves folded clothes in the laundry basket/on the sofa instead of putting them away. 
• Knits the sleeves, front, and back of a sweater, never sews the pieces together. 
• Starts writing a story, or a blog, leaves the piece at day’s end, and never returns to it.

I could go on.

FYI: There are an obscene amount of albums called "Unfinished Business." 

So when I decided to do 360 straight days of yoga practice, one of my goals was not “to complete something for once in my life.” Yes, my ultimate goal is to complete 360 straight days, but I didn’t think of it as a giant exercise in seeing a project through from start to finish. However, that’s exactly what it is.

With this goal of completion, there is a danger of looking at this year in terms of success and failure. This way of thinking doesn’t fit with yoga at all. When Patanjali uses the word “yoga” in his Yoga Sutras, it means “a state of wholeness” as well as the different practices (postures, pranayama, etc.) associated with this state. Should I step onto the mat everyday with the idea in my head that, “I have to do yoga today so I don’t fail,” I would be approaching my practice from a limited outlook. Yoga would become a chore (which I’ve discussed before), and I would be practicing with an ugly sense of obligation, with a fear of failure, and from a place of self-judgment. I would not be in a state of wholeness; I would not be open to whatever experiences might unfold while on the mat; and it wouldn’t be fun at all! As long as I upheld this outlook, even if I “succeeded” in practicing every single day, my yoga 360 would still be a failure. 

In her book, Living Your Yoga, Judith Lasater says, “The only real success in life is living with an open, loving heart.” I think that’s true. If I do miss a day of yoga, if I say to myself, “So you missed a day—it’s not worth beating yourself up over and discrediting all the yoga you did before today and all the yoga you’ll do after today,” then that, frankly, is a tremendous success.

Don’t get me wrong: I fully intend to keep doing yoga every single day until New Year’s. I intend to complete this thing. And it is a gigantic exercise in seeing a project through from start to finish. But it isn’t a gigantic exercise in NOT FAILING to see a project through from start to finish. It is a gigantic exercise in dedication and commitment. I am dedicated and committed to seeing this year through from start to finish, and more importantly, I am dedicated and committed to living with an open, loving heart—today, next month, come January 2011, come January 2021, and so on. 

 That's right, I'm the bacon.

Namaste!

The challenges of practicing at home

Ugh.

Let me set the scene. It's Friday morning. I've been writing for the man most every day for the past two weeks. I've also been doing yoga every day for the past two weeks (plus three days). Honestly, my life has never felt so routine and predictable. Good thing? Bad thing? Routines give me balance, and also can be quite conducive to better productivity. And, yes, I HAVE been on schedule with my writing. I have kept my place moderately clean. I have cooked meals and prepared lunch and even met my personal goal to ride the bus to the office at least once a week, and to go to the gym once a week. So I ask myself:

1. Is a regular yoga practice causing this regularity in the rest of my life? AND
2. How can an ADHD mind like mine tolerate the lack of drama?

Answers: Maybe, and I have NO IDEA.

For the last several years, my days have varied immensely from one to the next. In work, in mood, in energy, in sleep, in food, in everything. On one hand, that kind of variation is very exciting, stimulating to a brain that craves stimulation. It can provoke great creativity and lots of ideas. On the other hand, that kind of daily variation doesn't allow much room for actual growth and progress. I sort of forgot how to complete projects, how to follow through. So for all the exciting ideas and plans I'd make, most of them barely got off the ground. I'd abandon them as my life shifted and my interest with it. Ultimately, I felt like a failure and like I wasn't living up to my potential. While I think "Failure" is a harsh word now, I do think the latter was true.

Then, after perhaps the most varied, nutty six to eight months of my life, things began to settle down. I began to settle into things. Not that I love everything that I've settled into. I don't really enjoy writing for the man, but it does work for me right now. I would like to settle into my fiction writing instead, but that is another story. Right now, I'm just proud that I've settled into any routine at all, and that I'm not too itchy to ditch it.

The very first brick I laid in my more settled routine was yoga. Even when my life was whipping around everywhere like a cyclone, I went to yoga class on Tuesday mornings. Then I added Friday mornings. Then I swapped Tuesdays with Wednesdays. And then I changed Fridays to Mondays at a different studio. Okay, so this doesn't look very consistent and steady, but the point is: I've been committed to attending a regular yoga class most every week for about three years, and I've gone to Om Town on Wednesday mornings for Wendy's class for a full year.

A weekly yoga class only gives structure to ~90 minutes of the 10,080 minutes in a week. That's almost nothing. But what important 90 minutes they are! In the depths of an ugly depression or uncertain time, those 90 minutes gave me focus outside of the sad and the scary emotions that were dominating my life. I focused on my breath, on balance, on my muscle energy, and on the minute muscles and bones in my body--how to move each one into better alignment. I focused on not throwing up after holding my arms up in chair position for an eternity (or maybe just 90 seconds...).

Proper alignment takes a lot of focus, frequent check-ins, and minor adjustments. My therapist recently asked me if I had a lot of creative ideas while practicing yoga. The answer is absolutely not. Maybe if I let my mind wander in Savasana, a notion will come to me. But generally, my mind is so focused on my practice that there is no room for creative lightening bolts to strike. There is also no room for moodiness, and I note stress in my body, not my brain. When I think how therapeutic therapy is for me, I wonder why I wig out about dropping money on yoga classes but not on my therapist, who is great, but maybe not as essential to my well being as my yoga practice. Hmmmm....

I do think that by settling into a yoga routine, I laid the foundation to settle into the rest of my life with more ease. I think it's increased my patience, so that I can endure longer with dull work days that resemble one another an awful lot these days. Not that I'm complacent, but that I'm more or less content with things at this moment and I can sit still to ride it out. This is HUGE!

Now, in committing to 360 straight days of yoga, I'm biting off a lot. Some caring individuals, who know me pretty dang well and have seen my sudden starts and stops over the years, have expressed a little concern that I'm setting myself up to fail and that I'll be crushed if I do fail. That maybe I should give myself a break here and there. I really do understand where these concerns come from. I'm not offended or upset that these important people have reacted this way. I have these concerns too, trust me. But if I don't commit all the way, if I'm not absolute and firm in this goal, I WILL fail.

So on to my second question, how can an ADHD mind like mine tolerate the lack of drama? Or, put in the context of daily yoga practice, how can an ADHD mind like mine maintain enthusiasm for yoga practice day in and day out, especially when I'm practicing at home? This IS hard. When I'm trying to execute a pose sequence of my own design, at home, alone, lasting at least 30 minutes--well, I don't hold poses for that long. I get bored and want to get to the next sun salutation. I grow antsy in Savasana and I want to jump up and get in the shower. In my 360 of yoga, I need to mix it up with classes at yoga studios, at gyms, with podcasts, with yoga CDs, with yoga books, websites, etc. The other day, I bought the Yoga Deck so I could pull out cards to create a yoga sequence and then lay them out in front of my mat on the floor. I've got to stay flexible in my mind to succeed at this year of yoga.

The truth is that this is a great opportunity to try new yoga studios, teachers, positions, books, resources. If I look at it this way, it feels varied even in the routine, and my brain stays stimulated. I'm going to try to go to a new yoga studio/venue or try a new yoga teacher every week or two for the first few months of this project. And I need to keep invigorating my home practice, because one of my main intentions in this project IS to develop a good home yoga practice! I welcome any ideas about how to keep yoga fun and engaging at home. And I'd love to go with anyone to their yoga studio for a class!

By the way, tomorrow, Saturday, January 23 is:
a.) My half birthday. In my view, the age of 33 and a half is the official marker of being in one's "mid-thirties."
b.)Yoga Day USA. There will be free yoga events all over the place, and I will definitely be going to one of them! More about Yoga Day USA here.

And now, I'm going to get out of this chair and head to the office. And get some very not yogi-like coffee. Wah ha ha ha!

Utkatasana
Please make it stop. I can't hold my arm bones up this way any longer.

What is this blog all about? -- Part One

Welcome!

My name is Jessica and I am a yoga fiend. It's true. Yoga has helped me through some difficult times. It has transformed my body and mind. Yoga is something I am unabashedly, totally passionate about. So much so that I am committing to practicing yoga for 360 straight days.

You, my imagined readers, may ask, "Why 360 days versus, say, 365 days?" Well, some people make resolutions for New Years. I have not grown up to be one of those people. I am one of those people who forget to think about New Years resolutions until New Years Day. Likewise, I am a person who doesn't like to set goals that aren't achievable (Learn to speak fluent Chinese this year!) or boring (Floss twice every day). And I am an over-thinker; if I am making a resolution, I better have a well thought-out plan of action. So... I don't make resolutions quickly or easily, which means I rarely succeed in making New Years resolution. But I do like the idea of resolutions, of setting massive goals and committing to them, of having criteria and deadlines to meet. And I like having a little more structure and responsibility in my daily life. I tend to be more successful and happy in most aspects of my life when I have a little bit of a fire burning under my tush.

So when the idea came to me, during Savasana in my Wednesday morning yoga class on January 6, to do yoga everyday for a year, I was only momentarily phased by the fact that the first five days of 2010 had already come and gone. I considered doing yoga for 365 days and wrapping up my year on January 5, 2011. But I like the number 360 for obvious reasons: a full rotation, a complete circle. Why are there 365 days in the typical year? There should totally be 360 days!

What does the starting point of a circle look like upon return, after you've traveled around its entire circumference? Does the planet look or feel any different after undergoing a full rotation? What does Adho Mukha Svanasana--Downward-Facing Dog, perhaps the most frequently executed pose by Western yoga practitioners--what does it feel like after doing the pose for 360 straight days? I want to know if it feels or looks different. And I want to know what I look and feel like after 360 straight days of doing yoga. I wonder, will I:

• Feel happier? More balanced and patient? Calmer? More spiritual? Less anxious? Less inclined to suffer SAD in the winter?
• Look different--be slimmer or have more muscle bulk? Grow a few centimeters in height?
• Sleep better? Make smarter decisions about what I eat and drink?
  
• Be more organized with my time and space? Keep my apartment cleaner so I have room for my yoga mat and to do handstand at the wall? Improve my focus and attention in other parts of my life?
  
• Be more mindful of others in my words and actions, even my thoughts? Be kinder to myself, love myself more, forgive myself for not being perfect?
• Be stronger in my core? Be more stable in my pelvis? Have better posture/alignment? Develop those tiny muscles in my inner hips and the arches of my feet to protect my knees and to help stave off genetic physical ailments? Reduce the frequency of migraines? Improve my circulation? Achieve super healthy blood pressure readings?
• Master more challenging poses that we do once in awhile in yoga class and then don't return to again for several months, so that I never really feel like I've full learned how to properly execute them? Poses like Bakasana? Get my hamstrings to finally open up enough to straighten my legs all the way in Uttanasana or to touch my heels to the ground in Downward Dog? Stand on one leg with my other foot up by my head without tipping over?
  
• Be more content with yuck weather and yuck work and yuck people? Handle difficult news and situations with more equanimity and grace?
• Be forever transformed?
• Levitate????

Stay tuned...

Namaste!